Has God Abandoned America?

Publisher’s Note...
    On May 3rd of this year during the National Day of Prayer (NDP), one of the nation’s most respected Christian leaders, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Comminity Church in Sun Valley, CA gave the following sermon entitled A Nation Abandoned by God.
    For those not familiar with Pastor MacArthur, he is a bestselling author and a popular conference speaker as well as the president of Grace to You (www.gty.org) and the featured teacher of the Grace to You radio program which airs more than 800 times daily on stations around the world.
    Pastor MacArthur’s  NDP message was considered so important that Dr. James Dobson (Focus on the Family) featured it for two days on the June 4th & 5th editions of his Focus on the Family radio show.
    Most oral sermons by their nature are not structured as an article for publication. Therefore, I have edited the following sermon by eliminating a portion of Pastor MacArthur’s  introduction, added some punctuation, and made other minor adjustments for the sake of clarity and readability.  In no way have I changed the meaning of this sermon. Those who wish to verify what I am saying is true are more than welcome to go to the Grace to You website and download the entire sermon or print it out.
    Folks, I have never heard a major Christian leader proclaim that “God has abandoned America.”  That’s a serious statement with serious implications.
    I highly encourage you to read this entire sermon. Think seriously about what Pastor MacArthur has said. Think about the founding of our nation and where we are today.
    I don’t know whether or not God has abandoned America. I’m not saying He has and I’m not saying that He hasn’t. However, I do think we need to pray. I think we need to pray like we’ve never prayed before. We need to pray for our nation, its people and our leaders to fall to their knees in repentance. We need to pray that this nation will turn from its wicked ways, follow God’s Word – the TRUTH -  and return to Jesus. We need to pray that, as Pastor MacArthur states in his closing comments, “We might be the greatest recovery story in history.”    

A Nation Abandoned by God
By Pastor John MacArthur

    It’s not a small thing to have the opportunity such as I have tonight to try to put a little bit of perspective and focus on the issue of praying for our nation. There are so many things that could be said and probably should be said and I certainly don’t intend to say them all, by any means. But trying to funnel down our thinking a little bit so that our prayers can be direct is really helpful. I want to try to target our prayers in what, I believe, is the most needful way - not to the exclusion of any other things, but this, I think, has to be the primary focus. It may take me a little while to get to that point, so you need to stay with me and you’ll see how this unfolds, and hopefully it will be helpful. That certainly is my prayer.

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The True Thanksgiving Story
By Dennis Rupert

    It seems that every year we are treated to articles attempting to disprove the “myth of Thanksgiving.” In these articles we are told that: The Pilgrims weren’t the first people in America to hold a thanksgiving; That the first thanksgiving had no religious significance at all, but was merely a harvest festival; That our traditional Thanksgiving dinner has nothing in common with the Pilgrim’s meal.  Some of these accusations are not a serious concern. After all, who cares if the Pilgrims served cranberries or not? But what seems to lie behind some of these articles is a desire to devalue the religious nature of our present Thanksgiving holiday. This is unfortunate since Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays on the America calendar that is not swept away with commercialism or mixed with pagan elements.
    So here is ‘The True Thanksgiving Story.’ We have included references to primary sources which you can read for yourself. After reading I believe that you will still be able to eat your turkey with a happy stomach and a grateful heart to God.

Who Observed the First Thanksgiving?
    Okay, it wasn’t the Pilgrims. Of course, native Americans celebrated many thanksgiving festivals before Europeans ever arrived in America. For example, the Wampanoag (Indian allies of the Pilgrims) held six thanksgiving festivals during the year.
    The first recorded Christian thanksgiving in America occurred in Texas on May 23, 1541 when Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, and his men held a service of thanksgiving after finding food, water, and pasture for their animals in the Panhandle.
    Another thanksgiving service occurred on June 30, 1564 when French Huguenot colonists celebrated in solemn praise and thanksgiving in a settlement near what is now Jacksonville, Florida.
    On August 9, 1607 English settlers led by Captain George Popham joined Abnaki Indians along Maine’s Kennebec River for a harvest feast and prayer meeting. The colonists, living under the Plymouth Company charter, established Fort St. George around the same time as the founding of Virginia’s Jamestown colony. Unlike Jamestown, however, this site was abandoned a year later.
    Two years before the Pilgrims on December 4, 1619, a group of 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Plantation in what is now Charles City, Virginia. The group’s charter required that the day of arrival be observed yearly as a day of thanksgiving to God. Captain John Woodleaf held the service of thanksgiving. Here is the section of the Charter of Berkley Plantation which specifies the thanksgiving service: “Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty god.”
    In addition to 1619, the colonists perhaps held services in 1620 and 1621. The colony was wiped out in 1622. It was a private event, limited to the Berkeley settlement.
    Thus Spanish, French and British colonists held several Thanksgiving services in America before the Pilgrim’s celebration in 1621. Most of these early thanksgivings did not involve feasting. They were religious in nature, i.e. worship services of thankfulness to God.

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